Opening Ceremonies + Road Trip

The opening ceremonies was an amazing experience. We took a tour bus from the Dan to Ramat Gan Stadium in the mid afternoon where we entered a caged off athlete staging area where all the athletes mixed and mingled before the parade into the stadium. There were sandwiches, popsicles, and water to keep us all fed, hydrated, and comfortable.

We relaxed in lawn chairs and took pictures with different countries - the athletes from India wore very cool (hot) suits:

The Great Brits surprisingly were quite the trash talkers singing all sorts of songs aimed at the US delegation which we for the most part ignored, but some of the ladies had cute eye-makeup:

As you can see, the US team was all wearing these kind of old fashioned hats that looked kind of silly and was difficult to get looking just right.

better like this?

orrr like this?

i thought stacey wore hers very nicely...

by the time I was in the stadium, it was getting pretty crooked:

The Turks definitely had a nice color scheme going:

desperate much?

me with some israelis:

scary looking commies:

quite a view:

gdddeht scaught!

oui oui oui?

viva mexico!

the south africans:

once inside the stadium, and after the parade of nations, after the speeches (in ivrit) of the mayor of Ramat Gan and Prime Minister Netanyahu, there was a beautiful dance performance with hundreds of performers:

and the beautiful conclusion:

torch lighting: